This is our first pet and house sit and we are very grateful to Bella’s owners to have chosen us. Bella is a very sweet tempered, lovely dog. She’s not young anymore (almost 11 years old) and quite overweight, which makes mounting the 2 stairs to the apartment a challenge.
During our walks, she will pant heavily when going up, but when descending, she will every now and again even break into a trot for a couple of meters. We allow her to do what she wants as much as possible. She is getting a bit deaf and doesn’t seem to be able to see very well anymore, which accounts for her unfriendly behaviour towards other dogs. And she’s completely oblivious of the dangers of traffic, so she cannot be let of the leash, which is a pity.
Her biggest pleasure when outside is sniffing. She moves very slowly and is continuously sniffing everything, with very frequent stops to thoroughly investigate interesting smells. She doesn’t have the stamina to go on walks for longer than 30 minutes, and you should not expect to cover much ground during one of those 30-minute walks. In fact, it’s more like a walking meditation than anything else. But you can never have too many of those, so we don’t mind.
Yesterday, on our first day with Bella, we took her for a nice long walk in the morning: almost 40 minutes. We later discovered that this was really too much for her, as she refused to move for the rest of the day. We took her on a second walk late in the afternoon, but the third one, in the evening before we went to bed, she refused flat out to move. Christophe managed to get her down and out the door, but there she planted all 4 feet on the pavement and refused to move anywhere but back into the apartment building. Of course, the fact that it was raining cats and dogs might have had something to do with it too.
This morning, we took her on a gentle walk. The weather was still not very pleasant, but at least it didn’t rain anymore. Early afternoon, we were saying to each other that maybe 2 walks a day is enough. We’re particularly worried about the difficulty she has to mount two flights of stairs. But as soon as we had uttered the words, she came over to us, looked us in the eyes in a meaningful way, and barked. Twice. And then she sort of looked towards the entrance of the apartment. Well, if that isn’t clear communication, I don’t know what is!
